I have a question about using images in artistic/creative pieces, and I thought I would ask y'all first, since you know about such things.

For the past few months, I've been playing around with using captions with images (similar to some of the ones I've done in Graffiti contests on Mecha). I'm finding it a useful way to express some ideas I've had for a while.

The problem is that, for ethical/legal reasons, I can't display any of the results in public, as I was using Google searches to come up with people's faces to use, and I don't have the legal right to use these images. Also, there's an ethical concern - people would be less than flattered to see their faces associated with someone else's captions!

I'm wondering whether any of you have done similar work, and wondered how you resolved this issue? Did you use stock photographs from sites such as stock xchange, or get friends/acquaintances to sit for headshots? (The Onion solves this problem by using the same six stock headshots for all their "man on the street" interviews.)

Thanks in advance for any ideas you might have,
--Dave
(aka davet)

P.S.: I've saved a copy of this - if the original mecha forums are restored, I won't lose this question :)